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Why Him? : WWWIA

Why Him? is a movie starring James Franco and Bryan Cranston. The movie was advertised as a comedy that follows Ned (Cranston) as he meets his daughter’s boyfriend, Laird (Franco), for the first time!

We saw this movie on Christmas day with my parents and sister. While I can see this movie causing problems in some families, this was the perfect movie for us. We are the perfect mix of generation X and millenials, so we saw both sides of this outrageously funny story. This is not the kind of movie you want to take your pure minded grandma to go see!

There were a few times we were laughing so hard, partly because of the joke, partly because my parents were sitting next to us. But none of the jokes were really memorable. Unfortunately, like most comedies today, the story line got lost a little bit and the emotional parts were mashed together inorganically, making the less ‘haha’ parts harder to get through.

Overall, this was exactly what we were expecting, a bad holiday comedy.

6/10 would watch again!

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3 Responses

I’m glad you liked it but I think this film has self-destructed more than many I’ve seen lately. One thing that audience do not know in advance is that the film script is peppered with F-bombs and worse, with a running gag referring to a category of pornography especially degrading to women. We all expect colourful language these days, but it’s a substitute vocabulary that loses impact quickly. Cheap gags are more affordable than a quality script and even a strong cast cannot pull this film up from the depths it chose.

While I do agree with you that the ‘colorful’ language is usually a cop out, I didn’t see that in this movie. From what I understood, Laird’s use of f*ck every ten seconds was not necessarily a joke. One of the running themes in the film was the disconnect between millenials and gen x. Regularly there is an argument between the two about when cursing is acceptable, how much can you curse before you’re no longer being polite, if they’re just words why can’t we say them, a word only has the power you give it, and so on. I found that Laird’s swearing wasn’t meant so much to be a punchline as it was meant to create an even greater, more pronounced, disconnect between boyfriend and father. As I said in our review, the movie was forgettable, but worth watching at least the one time.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply Team Santana. The generational disconnect theme does indeed frame this film and I personally am not offended by running F-bombs in film. But social, moral and feminist boundaries are smashed when bukakke becomes a focal joke shared cross-generationally and with a 15 year old. As a film critic, rather than personally, I see this as a new low point in contemporary comesy. Is nothing off limits in film art or any arform? Do we make jokes of suicide, murder, physical and mental disability, female sexual degradation? Thats a matter for public discourse and I appreciate you opening the matter for debate in such a insighful way.